An Account of the Customs and Manners of the Micmakis and Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent on the Government of Cape-Breton eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 85 pages of information about An Account of the Customs and Manners of the Micmakis and Maricheets Savage Nations, Now Dependent on the Government of Cape-Breton.

In this his most Christian Majesty has been faithfully
served by these missionaries, in all points, except
that political injunction of not giving a handle for
just complaints, which they overshot in the ardor of
their zeal; since it is undoubted matter of fact, that
the missionaries openly employed all their arts, and
all the influence of religion, to invenom the savages
against us. Thence, besides a number of horrid
cruelties, the most treacherous and base murder of
captain How, at a conference, by some savages they
set on, who perpetrated it within sight of the French
forces. The publishing, however, of the foregoing
memorial may have this good effect, that it will apprise
the English of the matter of accusation against them,
and enable them to counter-work those holy engines
of state, and emissaries of ambition. It is also
certain, that this very memorial was drawn up by a
French priest, purely to furnish the French ministry
a specious document to oppose to the most just representations
of the British government. Besides the fictions
with which it abounds, he has taken care to suppress
the acts of cruelty committed, and the atrocious provocations
given by the savages, at the instigation of his fellow-laborers
sedition and calumny.]

LETTER

FROM

Mons. DE LA VARENNE,

TO HIS

FRIEND at ROCHELLE.

Louisbourg, the 8th of May, 1756.

Though I had, in my last, exhausted all that was needful
to say on our private business, I could not see this
ship preparing for France, especially with our friend
Moreau on board, without giving you this further
mark of how ardently I wish the continuance of our
correspondence. It will also serve to supplement
any former deficiencies of satisfaction to certain
points of curiosity you have stated to me; this will
give to my letter a length beyond the ordinary limits
of one: and I have before-hand to excuse to you,
the loose desultory way in which you will find I write,
as things present themselves to my mind, without such
method or arrangement, as a formal design of treating
the subject would exact. But who looks for that
in a letter?

I need not tell you how severely our government has
felt the dismemberment of that important tract of
country already in the possession of the English,
under the name of Acadia; to say nothing of their
further pretentions, which would form such terrible
encroachments on Canada. And no wonder it should
feel it, considering the extent of so fruitful, and
valuable a country as constitutes that peninsula.
It might of itself form a very considerable and compact
body of dominion, being, as you know, almost everywhere
surrounded by the sea, and abounding with admirable
and well-situated ports. It is near one hundred
leagues in length, and about sixty in breadth.